Goto $FFD7 in your ROM file (if it has a header goto $101D7) and change the byte from $0B to $0C. This will change the imbedded information to identify the ROM as being bigger than 16 megabits. This may fix your problems.

That fixed it! I have a lot to learn I guess, but that allowed Retro Programmer to flash to completion without crashing and the game runs. Thanks!

Stumbled over this while scrambling to find a way to play Zelda Parallel Worlds. INL-Retro-Prog was kind of... ickish. And giving me black screen on boot despite my padding, CRC fixing and everything

This software worked perfectly the first time and doesn't do that annoying "Not Responding" thing.

Thank you so much!

I'm glad it worked out for you. Thanks for taking the time to let me/us know. For the record, my releases are packaged with upgraded firmware that enables new features within the host app, but does not break backward compatibility with the original app, if you need it for NES support. Don't use the new rewrite, several bugs have been reported due to incomplete testing.

And to restate from previous posts, to make it easy to find; I apologize, but development is (still) on hold until I take care of some issues that've cropped up with work and life and so forth. Please feel free to report suggestions and/or issues in the meantime, I am coming back, and I will continue development, including adding proper NES support.

Hey there. Im brand new to these forums. This is actually my first post.

I'm impressed with your New Host App, as a newcomer to manipulating rom files (mirroring them, editing them in hex editors, etc.) it is nice that many roms seem to "just work" with your software. It has let me get some quick success, whereas I was completely unable to even burn SMW to my 8mb INL flash cart with the "standard issue" software.

Thank you so much for your work so far. It really has been a huge help to me, and has kept me from getting frustrated while I learn what I'm doing.

ANYWAY, I have a question relating to reading the SRAM.

I am exploring a few games, and have gotten pretty far in one game. I'd like to be able to preserve my SRAM from this game, so I can burn other roms to my flash cart, and then reload the preserved SRAM onto the cart again (along with it's corresponding ROM) at a later date.

Specifically, my questions are as follows:

1)Is there any way read the SRAM, save the program's buffer, and convert that buffer (which is presumably just an "image" ,if you will, of the cart's SRAM) into either a .srm or .sav file?

2)Additionally, can the SRAM reading functionality, in it's current state, allow me to read the SRAM, save the buffer, and rewrite that SRAM back to the cartridge later?

I don't know whether the pre-decompressed hack of Star Ocean works, but if it does work, it won't work on any INL flash cart but the largest. And games that use a coprocessor other than just for decompression will definitely not work. This means that even if Star Ocean works, Star Fox 2 won't.

Thanks for the information, Will try Star Ocean and leave comment soon.

Do you know or anyone know how to create or where to find information on programing a Star FOx 2 game?

thanks,

tepples wrote:

I don't know whether the pre-decompressed hack of Star Ocean works, but if it does work, it won't work on any INL flash cart but the largest. And games that use a coprocessor other than just for decompression will definitely not work. This means that even if Star Ocean works, Star Fox 2 won't.

You can't program Star Fox 2 with this cartridge. Well you can but it will never work. Star Fox requires the Super FX hardware which is not on any flash cartridge. SD2SNES one day might simulate the Super FX well enough to run games.

Star Ocean is supposed to work on INL Flash Carts that are big enough to hold the decompressed hack.

Hey there. Im brand new to these forums. This is actually my first post.

I'm impressed with your New Host App, as a newcomer to manipulating rom files (mirroring them, editing them in hex editors, etc.) it is nice that many roms seem to "just work" with your software. It has let me get some quick success, whereas I was completely unable to even burn SMW to my 8mb INL flash cart with the "standard issue" software.

Thank you so much for your work so far. It really has been a huge help to me, and has kept me from getting frustrated while I learn what I'm doing.

ANYWAY, I have a question relating to reading the SRAM.

I am exploring a few games, and have gotten pretty far in one game. I'd like to be able to preserve my SRAM from this game, so I can burn other roms to my flash cart, and then reload the preserved SRAM onto the cart again (along with it's corresponding ROM) at a later date.

Specifically, my questions are as follows:

1)Is there any way read the SRAM, save the program's buffer, and convert that buffer (which is presumably just an "image" ,if you will, of the cart's SRAM) into either a .srm or .sav file?

2)Additionally, can the SRAM reading functionality, in it's current state, allow me to read the SRAM, save the buffer, and rewrite that SRAM back to the cartridge later?

Thanks again for your efforts!

Sorry for taking so long to reply, here. In the future if there's something you need and I'm not responding, ping me with a PM - I'll answer there and/or in the forum thread itself.

Thanks for the positive comments. Unfortunately, work on this is still on hold. It should resume soon, life is trying to sorta normalize for me.

Right now, the SRAM code is mostly nonfunctional. I had some issues getting it to work properly and never had time to finish chasing it down - that's what's next in the lineup, so far as I'm concerned. Right now, it can be read, but proper size detection isn't working, so my intent was to use the ROM's header to detect size and cut the SRAM image properly. I'm not familiar with .srm or .sav internal formatting, but I'd imagine it's not far off from what's dumped by the program. SRAM reading is barely working, but SRAM writing is presently completely nonfunctional - that wasn't in INL's original firmware, and despite the fact that it should be stupid levels of simple to get to work, it was fighting me, and I was already in a situation where working on the code was rough. It's probably something simple that I overlooked.

For now, the only way to keep SRAM between games is a hardware mod switching the uncontrolled address lines on the SRAM chip to a different area. It's a fairly simple mod for anyone who can solder SMD parts - basically isolate the top one or two address between the SRAM and the CPLD and install your own hi/lo switches for manually switching the top few bits of the SRAM address line. I say 'top few' because I'm not certain how many address lines are controlled, presently. From what I remember, 32k is the largest SRAM used, and (again, from memory) the INL carts use either 1m or 2m SRAM. Should give you plenty of addresses to switch. What I would do is get a binary counter switch (the type you'd see in old SCSI drives for ID select) and connect it to either VCC or Gnd on the common pin, and each of the output pins to a different SRAM address (starting from topmost and working down) and then put a pull-up resistor from each address line to VCC. Suitable resistor values must be chosen, as any time a pin is pulled down by the switch it'll load the regulator further, moreso if your value is too low. Then you just have to remember (or label) which switch position is which game. Using an 8-position (0-7) switch requires three address lines, aka 8 banks, using 256k per bank, which is well above the largest SRAM chip used in the SNES to my knowledge. If I'm wrong and it's a 1m chip, that's still 128k which should be safe.

To answer the Starfox 2 questions - that's actually why I started this whole thing. I was looking for info on making an SF2 cart with modern hardware instead of old 5v UV EPROMs or discontinued 5v flash, and stumbled across the INL boards. They can't, won't, and never will run Starfox 2 or any other SuperFX/GSU/SA-1/etc based ROM, unless he releases another version with an FPGA emulating the hardware like some of the more expensive carts does. I'm looking into another solution, which should (in theory) allow this to work, but it's either going to be an ungodly hack or a long, long time coming. In the mean time, if you need Starfox 2 (or any other expansion chip based game) you'll have to buy a cart and chip swap it.

I'd also like to say thanks to everyone for not nagging about the stalled progress on the software. I'm at the end of my rope, and I'm pretty sure if someone started nagging I'd just walk away from the whole thing at this point. Thank you for bearing with me. It's not abandoned. I will be back.

I think the most common SRAM is 64k (8kx8) on the standard carts. Only a small number of standard carts use 256k. SIMM city + jr. & 2000, Acme animation, Tecmo bowl III to name a few... And there is equally a small number of carts that use the 16k SRAM (2k x 8). The DKC series (the DKC's have SRAM checks). Others are NBA jam TE, Vegas stakes, NCAA football, NHL Stanley cup. They're might be others but not too many more.

The FX games use 256k and 512k ( 512k - starfox2, stunt race, winter gold, and 1 other I think).

... - Fixed patches applied to The Best Protected SNES Game of All Time(tm) for its third-layer protection...

Does this only apply up to lvl 3 protection or are all 5 levels patched?

For all who may be interested in my experience. I was unable to get this game to work at first (I think due to mirroring) However what I did finally was unplug the kazzo, load my ROM, check auto-fix protection, and clicked write to kazzo (this caused it to apply the patches in the buffer without writing to the cart). I then clicked save buffer (this saved the patched ROM to a file). At this point I had the original 3MB file which was patched into a 4MB file. I have a 8MB cart so I used HxD to mirror the ROM to 8MB. At this point I probably could have used Danin's software to write the ROM to the cart (I wish I tried), but I used the original INL software to write to the cart. When I play it on my Super Famicom it seems to work perfect.

Lastly I want to say thanks to Danin this software is coming along greatly and is really helpful.

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